Rob GobleGeorge Perkins Marsh Institute

Clark University, Worcester, MA

NCSU Workshop on Communicating Health and Safety Risks on Emerging Technologies in the 21st Century

North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC

August 28-29, 2008

Uncertainty and risk communication concerning emerging technologies: describing uncertainties is

not the only challenge

Disclaimer: I’m not expert on Risk Communication or Nanotechnology

I have worked with a group of colleagues considering risk management implications of high uncertainty:

Dale Hattis, Clark UniversityRoger Kasperson, Clark UniversityVicki Bier, University of WisconsinDavid Hassenzahl, UNLVSeth Tuler, WPIHeidi Larson, UNAIDS and Clark UniversityFurther disclaimer: they are not responsible for the specifics

in this presentation

Strawman I: Traditional Risk Communication

Risk Assessors Risk Managers

Decisions

Stakeholders

Strawman II: Communication within an “analytic-deliberative” process

Risk Assessors Risk Managers

Stakeholders

DecisionsAnalytic and Deliberative Processes

The problem I’m concerned with is what gets communicated if

• You don’t know whether some application of nanotechnology is a hazard

• You might not even know what sort of hazard it might be when you don’t know whether it is or is not a hazard

That last sentence violates what many of you teach about good communication - to be clear and straightforward - but the problem (the risk to the risk communicator) is real

• Most people, however, don’t care about the detailed nature of a hazard

• They want to know what you are going to do about it - and to have some assurance that you know what you are doing

And this brings us to risk management…We have identified 3 modes of management response that are appropriate in situations of high uncertainty:

• Adaptive management– Monitoring and adjusting responses accordingly– Examples: stewardship, rad waste(?)

• Reframing (redefining) the problem– Examples: rad waste, toxic chemicals

• Maintaining vigilance– Developing a broad information base– Seeking out unfamiliar possibilities – Preparing to address surprises– Examples, PBDE (flame retardants), acrylamide

Nanotechnology (or nanotechnologies) can be viewed as “insidious threats”

A package of attributes that might characterize an agent as:

• Persistent

• Invisible

• Unfamiliar

• Unnatural

• Not controllable

• Having late emerging effects

Even when the science is relatively well understood (as with radioactive materials) “insidious threats” pose a serious challenge for risk communication.

• Evoked anxieties make discussion difficult• And trust or lack of trust has critical impacts on any

management activity

Our charge was to say something about “key variables” and something about “modes of communication”

I contend that looking at management approaches offers a good opening for looking for relevant “key variables”.

• Adaptive management invites attention to– Concerns about contamination (in environments, in humans) and about

health– Capabilities for paying attention to monitoring findings– Capabilities for responding to new findings– Concerns about continuity and trust

• Problem framing raises issues• How closely are different nanotechnology applications linked• How do they seem similar and different from other toxic substances

Looking to management modes to find variables - II

• Maintaining vigilance– Expectations about the scale (present and future) of

nanotechnology applications

– Expectations about the knowledge base

– Concerns about what can go wrong

– Concerns about who is paying attention, who is responsible

Modes of communication

• It should be possible to have an analytic-deliberative process concerning management responses to high uncertainty– There is some (mixed) experience in stewardship programs

• It is important to keep track of expert perceptions and predictions